User reviews

This exciting film is well-worth watching. It is visually rich, and the acting is consistently surprising, even from such known quantities as George Coulouris and Wilfred Hyde-White. Trevor Howard shows great emotional flexibility, a quality we don't necessarily associate with him, and Robert Morley twinkles a good deal less than usual. Whether Sir Ralph Richardson looks good throwing a punch is something you'll have to decide for yourself.

However, the camera falls in love with picturesque young boys diving into water, which delays, over-ornaments and distracts from Conrad's austere story-telling.

More importantly, two of the female characters, Mrs. Almayer and Mrs. Willems, are turned from native women into transplanted Englishwomen, leaving Aissa the only native girl involved.

This has the effect of turning the movie into a tract on the horrors of miscegenation, when Conrad's novel is clearly focused on Peter Willems' double betrayal of Tom Lingard. Willems' taking up with a native woman is treated by the film as unique, instead of the usual thing in these climes. It is shown as embodying Willems' personal moral decline, which the book would regard as nonsense.

So if you can find the film, by all means watch it and enjoy its many virtues, but the movie has less to do with one of the great novels then it pretends to.

P.S. TCM now has this film in its library!

Despite being of Polish descent and not learning English until his twenties Joseph Conrad became one of the greatest writers in the English language. His novels are deeply pessimistic and depict Man as being able neither to escape nor elude his destiny. To say that his works are unfilmable would be an overstatement but they certainly pose particular challenges. Such a pity that David Lean's plan to direct Conrad's late work 'Nostromo' did not come to fruition.

Here we have his second novel directed by another of our truly great directors Carol Reed. Although Reed's films of the 1960's show a distinct falling off, this comes from a period when he is really 'on form'. There are changes from the novel but that is par for the course where film adaptations are concerned. Conrad was fascinated by the nature of evil and here it is personified by Trevor Howard as Willems who plays his part with tremendous relish. Ralph Richardson brings his presence to bear as Lingard although his appearance is rather pantomimic. Robert Morley and Wendy Hiller are excellent as Mr. And Mrs. Almayer but her role is underwritten and 'ambiguous' to say the least.

In the novel Willems dies but here he is left to exist in the living hell he has created for himself and Aissa, played by Kerima, whose sexual magnetism has caused so much destruction. Willems has described his feelings for her as 'something between love and hate but stronger' and this ambivalence is powerfully depicted.

Reed and adaptor William Fairchild have ended the film with a masterful shot of Aissa lowering her head in despair. This sweeping and mesmerising film with a majestic score by Brian Easdale is from a director at the top of his game.

This movie got short shrift critically, because it followed Carol Reed's three greatest films, "Odd Man Out," "The Fallen Idol," and "The Third Man." It's been a while since I saw it, but if you get a chance and you're a fan of Reed's adventurous filmmaking, check it out. A riveting performance by Trevor Howard -- this, plus his performances in 3rd Man and Brief Encounter show an astonishing range. Robert Morley is wonderful as well.

My most memorable moments that still haunt me years after I saw the film: Morley "singing" a lullaby to his daughter ("Schlaf, kindchen, Schlaf") as Howard approaches in the night -- and said daughter calling "Pig!" after Howard's character later in the same scene. The bonfire, and Morley's torture. And Howard spotting Kerima standing in the water among the posts -- beautiful photography.

An unjustly forgotten film. May it play at a repertory theater near you.

British drama based on a book by Joseph Conrad. Trevor Howard stars as middle manager in a Far East shipping company. When he's found to have been embezzling, he's virtually exiled and runs of with his old friend, ship captain Ralph Richardson. Ralph takes him to a remote island paradise and instructs Trevor to learn the ways of their trading business with local overseer Robert Morley. However, Howard slowly succumbs to his worst impulses in the never-ending heat and boredom of island life.

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. The direction from Carol Reed is good, although things drag in a few places. The cinematography is very good; one of the camera operators was Freddie Francis. Guy Hamilton also worked as the assistant director. My chief problem with the film was the Howard character. I haven't read the source novel, and perhaps it provided more of the inner voice of the character, but as he stands in the film, he's completely unlikable, and not in a compelling or entertaining way. He's just a boring, self-centered jerk.

The natives are presented in a less-than-flattering light as well, which is exacerbated by having one of them be George Coulouris in dark body paint. I've also never been fond of Robert Morley. He's an irritating ham and he's unpleasant to even look at. That's terrible to say, I suppose, but in a visual medium, it's a valid point. His real-life daughter played his on-screen daughter here, and she's just as annoying.

I am a big fan of THE THIRD MAN, I think it is one of the seven greatest movies ever made, I liked ODD MAN OUT, and also liked Reeds earlier effort of THE FALLEN IDOL. His latter film, THE KEY, while not being totally successful in my eyes in a good film, and an even better film is OUR MAN IN HAVANA. So I was excited about seeing this film. Perhaps if I was more patient, had seen this in a movie theater as it was meant to be seen, and did not have the benefit of a remote control for a VCR, I would have liked it more.

Everyone has said how great Trevor Howard is. I have also liked him in staring roles like Brief Encounter, Clouded Yellow, but here, even though he has some great moments, more towards the end of the film, I somehow feel he has been miscast. In one of the opening scenes, when he leaves the Billiards club, I felt I was watching Howard Imitating Orson Welles from THE THIRD MAN. if Reed and Welles could have formed a partnership, and that might have actually been from ODD MAN OUT, I think he would have been a better choice, though I'm sure they couldn't get him. One of the problems with his character is, that we realize right from the beginning what a jerk he is, and their fore, we never really care about him. This film would have worked better for me if I would have liked this guy in the beginning. Welle's Harry Lime, was a likable character, even though he was not a good man. Bogarts Harry Dobbs in Treasure Of the Sierra Madre works because we care about him in the beginning, and are sad to see his mental destruction. Howard's character elicits no such feelings, and for me this is one of the major failings of the film, and why this film has not received the accolades of Reed's previous three films.

I found Ralph Richardson's performance hammy, I just could not buy him as a captain, appeared to be a poor makeup job, and since we don't see him much, (He ironically got top billing), he does not appear to be important to this story, even if he gives the final denouncement. I also disliked George Courlouris (did I spell that right) as a native. Since they filmed this in Ceylon, they did not need an actor doing a role in black face.

Robert Morley is excellent in this film however. Those people who have always looked upon him as that jolly Englishmen who did those British Airline commercials, or seen him in other films, will get quite a revelation in this film. He is the one standout in this movie. One can just imagine how his daughter might turn out having a father like this. His character, while perhaps not being the character that Howard's character is, just oozes slime, would you want a father like this, and his acting makes the most of it. Wendy Hiller is alright as the suffering wife of Morely, and they should have made more of what I thought might have been her lust for the Howard character, while Howard's character lusts after the native woman, who, played by an actress named Kerima, who is supposed to have been born in Algeria, almost looks like an English actress given a darker skin tone, though probably not.

Reeds direction at the beginning of this film is unimaginative, I was quite disappointed with the back screen shots that were employed considering the location photography, and I always remember his great cinematography from his other films (Love that tilted camera). However never has lust been filmed so amazingly in an early 1950's movie, (British at that), here Howard is quite good, and the shots of Kerima, our realizing that she does not love this man and may have ulterior motives, in closeup, without Howards knowledge are well done. The last two climactic sequences, with Morely and Howard in a sequence that seems to predate Cornel Wilde's THE NAKED PREY, which probably sent shock waves in cinema's of the early 1950's, and the sequence at the end between Howard and Richardson are two very memorable moments from this film.

If the film comes out on DVD, with some interesting extras, a good audio commentary, I would be interested to see it again, and Hopefully get some further insight that might change my mind. However, of the six movies I have seen of Director Carol Reed, This is my least favorite.

Although he made a handful of worthwhile films before them and won a competitive Oscar much later, Carol Reed is still most admired for his immediate post-WWII work: ODD MAN OUT (1947), THE FALLEN IDOL (1948), THE THIRD MAN (1949) – all of them BAFTA winners – and the movie under review. The latter is the least-seen and least-regarded of the lot (perhaps because there are very few sympathetic characters in it!) but emerges a remarkable achievement nevertheless, with the director's sure hand more than evident in several striking sequences throughout. It features a great cast, all of whom deliver splendid performances: Trevor Howard (second-billed but clearly the protagonist here), Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley, Wendy Hiller, George Coulouris (as an English-speaking native!), Wilfrid Hyde-White and Frederick Valk.

While the Far East atmosphere is undeniably vivid and captivating (and John Wilcox's cinematography suitably gleaming), this never draws attention away from the complex character study at the center of Joseph Conrad's typically sea-based and compelling plot line (which works its way up to an abrupt yet memorable ending) about a rogue trader driven mad by lust for a native girl (the silent Kerima) and delusions of grandeur a' la Kurtz in the same author's "Heart Of Darkness". For the record, OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS was also a BAFTA nominee, was apparently shorn of 8 minutes for U.S. TV screenings and is featured in cult American film-maker Monte Hellman's All-Time Top 10 list, apart from being championed by eminent movie critics like Pauline Kael and David Thomson!

When the Marlon Brando version of Mutiny On The Bounty came out one of the scenes I remember is Trevor Howard remonstrating with Brando after finding him getting ready to get down to business with Tarita about controlling his lust. Captain Bligh would have had little use for the character that Howard plays in Outcast Of The Island where his lust truly gets the better of him.

Those tropical islands have always had a certain allure to us westerners, but this movie based on a Joseph Conrad novel clearly demonstrates the problem of having too much of a good thing. Howard's been in the area for years and he's indulged all the readily available vices too much for too long. When he's caught stealing it might be the end for him.

But an old friend trading captain Ralph Richardson takes pity on him and takes him from Singapore to a small island where his son-in-law Robert Morley lives with wife Wendy Hiller and real life daughter Annabel Morley. Richardson deposits him there, not that Morley truly wants him.

It doesn't take long for Howard to start stirring things up and all of his schemes and machinations involve a bad case overwhelming lust for the beautiful Kerima. She certainly is something to lust over. In the end she brings about his total ruination.

The central character among the Occidentals is Howard, but Richardson and Morley aren't any model specimens either. Richardson's main concern is keeping a monopoly of the trade there. The harbor is inaccessible for the most part, but Richardson knows a narrow navigable passageway through the reefs so he monopolizes the trade. And he's pretty ruthless about keeping his monopoly.

As for Morley he's one uptight businessman. The prior relationship between Richardson and Morley is taken up in a previous Conrad novel and sad to say if you haven't read that book, a lot of it will elude the viewer.

Hiller is good, but sadly wasted in a role of a woman trapped in a bad situation. She's got an unrequited yen for Howard, but she's still a faithful wife, just like Jean Arthur in Shane.

Outcast Of The Island is a most atypical South Seas story. Conrad's vision is not fully realized by the film, but the players all do a fine job with what they are given.

As art I rate this the single greatest movie I've ever seen. Not for those with a weak stomach. An incredible performance by Robert Morley as a man driven insane by hate. The hatred is directed at Trevor Howard who's inner demons lead him to destruction. This film has a cast of cannibalistic natives who consider murder a recreational sport.

This film falls well below Carol Reed's best work. Despite a strong cast and the benefits of location shooting, the action is dissipated by poor editing (the frenzied intercutting of shots). The idea of the worthless white man left to wash up on an alien shore (condemned to the too-fleshy arms of his 'half-caste' woman) seems terribly hackneyed from today's viewpoint. Reed's artistry, unfortunately, is not sufficient to overcome these weaknesses. The one memorable thing is the presence of the actress, Kerima, whose character does not utter even one line of dialogue. That the film's assistant director, Guy Hamilton, should have married her soon after will came as no surprise to anyone. As much as I admire Trevor Howard, Wendy Hiller and Ralph Richardson as performers, this is not a worthy vehicle for their talents.

What is it about Conrad that even film-makers as good as Carol Reed struggle to put his stories to film? For what it's worth, I think Hitchcock's 'Sabotage' is a better film, albeit a loose adaptation of Conrad's 'The Secret Agent', than this more faithful adaptation of 'The Outcast of the Islands'.

Probably the most exotic film of the black & white phase of Carol Reed's career as a director, 'An Outcast of the Islands' marks his venture into Conrad's heart of darkness.

Although Ralph Richardson gets star billing as Captain Lingard the film plainly belongs to Trevor Howard in the title role as Peter Willems, succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh in the feral form of Kerima.

The British empire are represented by Robert Morley who brings weighty presence to the part of Almayer (with Wendy Hiller as his wife kitted out incongruously in a cute little bonnet and carrying a parasol); while further down the cast list comes the remarkable sight of George Coulouris in blackface and veteran silent director A. V. Bramble as Kerima's father, a blind village elder who when he throws a curse on Howard draws the response - displaying typical British sang froid - "Well, that's not very helpful!"

I had no idea before watching that OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS was based on a novel by Joseph Conrad; I might have avoided watching it had I known. I'm not a fan of Conrad after I struggled to read HEART OF DARKNESS, which I found pretentiously written and a chore to struggle through. OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS explores a tale that sees the author on familiar ground, telling of an ordinary man driven out of his mind by the wild passions of the exotic Far East.

The film is set in and around some trading ports in an unnamed Eastern country, probably Malaya or the like. Trevor Howard plays a roguish character who begins the film by being sacked and then takes up a new position in another location, where he quickly falls for the charms of a native woman. Robert Morley has a splendid role as a stuffy ex-pat who crosses swords with Howard and the 'hammock' scene is by far the most memorable of the film.

Sadly, the rest of it is a bit of a bore. The ending is dramatic but it takes a long time to get there and it doesn't help that the writers give you nobody to root for. Ralph Richardson appears in the production so infrequently that he might as well be in a cameo. As ever, watching a bunch of British actors "browned up" to play natives dates this quite considerably. I like Howard when I've seen him in the likes of THE CLOUDED YELLOW but his hateful character here is too off-putting. I know Carol Reed made some well-remembered films but this certainly isn't one of them.

Carol Reed's "An Outcast Of The Islands" is generally conceded to be the finest film ever made of Joseph Conrad's tales. To be fair "Nostromo", "Under Western Eyes", and "Chance" never have been filmed. Hitchcock's "Sabotage" (based on "The Secret Agent") is a good Hitchcock film, but the story is modernized and changed. The later film version of the novel was politely received and then forgotten. "Victory" was made into a serviceable love and adventure story with Fredric March and Cedric Hardwicke, but the irony and allegory of the story was lost. "Lord Jim" was better recalled for the severe drubbing critics gave it - concluding with a Mad Magazine spoof called "Lord Jump". There is "Apocalypse Now" which is a fine attempt at "Heart of Darkness", but it changes the site of the story from the Belgium Congo of Leopold II to Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. "An Outcast" stuck to the basic story of Willems and his betrayal of Almayer and Captain Lingard for a beautiful native girl. Trevor Howard gave many memorable, delicate performances in his life (best, perhaps, for "Brief Encounter"), but this performance as a man who was poor enough material to begin with but goes to seed is possibly better. The supporting cast is great, with Robert Morley playing his most despicable character, and Ralph Richardson as the decent Lingard. George Coulouris is properly Machiavellian as the sly Babalatchi, and Wendy Hiller is tragic as that human dishrag Mrs. Almayer. The only problem a purist may have is that Willems is killed at the end of the novel accidentally (and quite memorably). Not so in the film. But his punishment of living as a monument to failure and hopelessness may be even more fitting - I leave to the reader/viewer.

Outcast of the Islands perhaps illustrates the reasons someone with the talents of Carol Reed so rarely achieved true greatness. Reed could make a great movie when everything came together, as in The Third Man, but unlike Orson Welles, he didn't have the level of brilliance where even his mistakes were interesting.

Outcast is the story of sleazeball Peter Willems, played with gusto by Trevor Howard, who embezzles some money then sets sail with an old sea-captain mentor who sails him to an Indonesian village. There he contends with the captain's angry son, considers betraying his mentor, and becomes obsessed with a local beauty.

Filmed in Sri Lanka, the film does a lovely job of portraying the village, offering a level of authenticity unusual for the time and a real sense of a living, breathing place. This is undercut by the casting of Europeans in major parts. George Coulouris in brown make-up doesn't look or sound remotely like the extras surrounding him, and while the French actress Kerima doesn't look as out of place, it seems weird that they wouldn't consider a Sri Lankan actress for a non-speaking part.

This authentic/non-authentic dichotomy plagues the movie. Ralph Richardson's sea captain was weirdly unweathered; it was hard to believe he'd done more than day sailing. And I swear the little girl's voice is dubbed by a child impersonator, although I don't know why since she's still generally incomprehensible.

I also found the character development weak. The dynamics between the captain and his family seem poorly defined. The captain does a lot of dumb things and is insufferably paternal to the islanders (and neglectful to his son), yet I felt the movie was putting him forth as the "good" character. And I found his daughter-in-law's attitude towards Willems odd, in part because I was never clear on what she thought of her husband; it would make sense if she loathed him passionately and was completely blind to Willems flaws, but that's not clear in the film.

Robert Morley is excellent as the bitter son, but I feel there's an issue with the character. Morley is rather unpleasant to his wife and openly hostile towards Willems, and I think we're supposed to find him loathsome, but because his father is so unfatherly and because Willems really is a terrible person that the son is completely right about, I feel he's got some justifiable anger.

The end result is a movie with wonderful moments - the little boy trailing after the disdainful Willems, Kerima's eyes peering through a hut's reed wall, the little girl shouting "pig" as her father is tortured - undercut by all sorts of unfortunate directorial and casting decisions and a script that skimps on motivation.

The plot here is a bit on the convoluted side, but is does allow Trevor Howard to remind us that he could play a nasty character just about as well as anyone. He's been caught with his hand in the till and so is shunned by his bosses and his Far Eastern community. Fortunately, "Willems" manages to hook up with the decent, maybe even naive, "Capt. Lingard" (Sir Ralph Richardson) who knows some shortcuts through the treacherous seas and offers to take him somewhere remote where he can work with his agent "Almayer" (Robert Morley) and make a fresh start. Pretty swiftly, though, "Willems" takes to the bottle and also a bit of a shine to the deaf chief's daughter "Aissa" (Kerima) and soon is embroiled in not just a conflict with this traditional community, but with rival operators who want to know of his secret routes through the rocks for the trading goods. Egged on by the duplicitous "Babalatchi" (George Coulouris) he soon turns on the enthusiastic but ineffectual "Almayer" but meantime exposes himself to the wrath of not just the locals but of his benefactor, too. This is quite a powerful story of a man's self-destructive streak let loose and fuelled by lust, manipulation and spirits and Howard conveys that rather odious "Willems" well. Morley, likewise, is on good form as a character who could just have readily taken holy orders as joined a trading company and who is ill-equipped for any sort of contretemps, even when he sees it coming a mile off. There's something eerily potent about the effort from Karina too. With virtually no dialogue and just her eyes doing most of her acting for her, you are never quite sure just where she stands in all of this until quite near a denouement that I found fitting, but disappointingly inconclusive. It's a dark, grimy and seamy look at colonial exploitation, venality and maybe even sanity, too, and Carol Reed uses his cast, the scenarios and Brian Easdale's score to good effect.

Engaging yet somewhat uneven drama features the brooding, withdrawn Howard enamoured by the sultry (and mute) warrior daughter (Kerima) of a local chieftain on an Indonesian trading outpost after he's brought to the island by Captain Richardson, much to the chagrin of Robert Morley's character who regards Howard as a troublemaker.

Kerima is as exotic as she is enigmatic, and amid the backdrop of their torrid, forbidden affair, it's never really certain to whom her allegiance is sworn. Howard's besottedness soon becomes a vulnerability Morley is able to exploit to prove his instinctive distrust, whilst shifty tribal middleman Coulouris sees the opportunity to leverage Howard's weakness for financial & political gain in the important trade route which has otherwise remained in Richardson's monopolistic grip.

Nicely photographed and generally well-constructed South Seas romantic-melodrama meanders a bit, sometimes neglecting plot and pacing for characterisation, as Howard takes his time to reveal a deeply-insecure vagabond, tragically beguiled by the destructive wild thing he can't resist, despite patient warnings of the imminent peril it will bring.

Seductive newcomer Kerima (French former model turned actress and later wife to Guy Hamilton) is well-cast despite not having any dialogue, and Howard excels in the type of role for which he became synonymous; rugged, tough exterior disguising a deeply flawed personality which invariably leads to catastrophe. Very watchable.

The finest British film ever made. The greatest performance in the considerable list of good films by Trevor Howard. The most erotic British film EVER made. Delivers what Duel in the Sun wanted to be, what Gone With the Wind wanted to be, and what very few films in the history of cinema ever delivered. It has everything; high adventure, dripping erotic romance that makes all other romantic films look like Disney films, and electric performances by everyone in the cast. Karima is aptly named. Those piercing eyes! She doen't need useless words or dialogue. She speaks more with her eyes than ten actresses with 100 scripts. The hottest screen presence ever captured on film. If you are a male over 13, you will lust after her up to the age of 90. People rave about the Third Man and Brief Encounter, both of which were very good. And Brief Encounter is one of the most delicate love stories ever recorded on film; far better than Gone With the Wind as soap. The Third Man is a wonderful mystery, But this film is pure erotica for both men and women with a lustful soul. If you have one ounce of passion in your body, you will adore this film. It now goes into my top 20 films of all time; on my list of 100 of the best films of all time. Out of over 20,000 films I have viewed, this is the most erotic of them all.

I have not read the original Conrad novel, but I cannot imagine he would have been wholly satisfied with Carol Reed's translation of this to the screen.

However, this is worth seeing once for curiosity value. I ventured upon it whilst searching for Trevor Howard films, but this film belongs to Ralph Richardson, especially during the climax in the last ten minutes or so. Robert Morley is sterling, but Wendy Hiller is unfathomable most of the time.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times praised the acting, but at the end concluded: "The course of the downfall is clear and the general significance of it is neither arresting nor profound. If any Conradian sagacity is supposed to be lodged within the film, it entirely escaped this reviewer. It is a great show of sheer dry-rot, that's all." Slightly harsh,

This film's ensemble performs with has all the crispness of Reed's performances in FALLEN IDOL. (And Trever Howard, Ralph Richardson and Robert Morely are all superb.) It's shot with all the atmospheric richness of his THE THIRD MAN. Its story of a man unravelling may be too dark for some but it's done with all the mastery of NIGHT AND THE CITY and LAST TANGO IN PARIS.

What on earth was Wendy Hiller doing going from I Know Where I'm Going to this film? She hardly has any significant role in this whatsoever. She was eventually overshadowed by Robert Morley in Major Barbara and is ill-cast with him here. There is no interior life with this family, no chemistry between her and Morley. We're not given any context for their being on the island. I thought they were missionaries but this is not the case.

But it is Wendy Hiller's role that seems wasted. She seems drawn to Howard's character but the simmering feelings she holds are not really explored. Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger would have treated this aspect of the film, and Hiller, a whole lot differently. Carol Reed employs her as barely more than an extra.

I don't know the Joseph Conrad story so can't make the comparison. This film seems too melodramatic. I'm not wholly convinced by Trevor Howard's performance.

I remember making an occasion of my 50th "user comments" by electing to write about a film that I found rather special, Carol Reed's "The Third Man". I concluded those comments by saying that I would take the opportunity to write about Reed's one remaining great film, "Outcast of the Islands", as my hundredth contribution, so here goes. We had left school by the time "Outcast" appeared so opportunities for quizzes during breaks no longer existed. Instead a group of us would visit the cinema together once a week and when walking home would give each other a slot of about ten minutes in which to extemporise a criticism of what we had just seen. This would certainly have been our "Outcast" game as we devoured everything Reed gave us. He was in fact our God. Although much of his work now seems a little dated and I am not at all sure that "Odd Man Out" or "The Fallen Idol" are quite the masterworks that we thought they were at the time, critical acclaim seems undiminished for "The Third Man". This has never been quite the case with "Outcast" although it found a great devotee in Pauline Kael who described it as "a marvellous film". It is a work that grabs you from the very first shot of a seething mass of natives and even an elephant on a dockside in the Far East and sweeps you forward with its tremendous pace and the director's sheer love of bravura cinema. It doesn't quite conform to any of the conventional genres being hardly an adventure thriller, a romance or a tragedy and yet it has elements of all three. I suppose one would have to call it high melodrama, a film, epic in its detail and scope yet more concerned with integrating its vast gallery of images of local colour into its narrative than bursting into big set-pieces of action. Films about anti-heroes have never had great box office success, much less those where the anti-hero is weak through and through. Was it this that doomed Wyler's greatest film "Carrie" to near oblivion and was partly the reason for the neglect of "Outcast of the Islands"? And yet to ignore Trevor Howard's marvellous portrayal of Joseph Conrad's pathetically inadequate Willems would be to pass over one of British cinema's finest performances. And then there is that great actor Ralph Richardson as Captain Lingard whose Achilles heel is the misplaced trust he places in Willems. His portrayal has been seen as over the top by some but I would defend it to the hilt for its quality of Shakespearian declamation that is all part and parcel of Reed's directorial style. So often during his work of this period he shoots his scenes, particularly those between two characters, as if they are taking place on a huge theatrical stage. They shout at each other across large spaces, an effect that gives such scenes tremendous strength and resonance. The final sequence of "Outcast" between Howard and Richardson where they employ this device during the sudden outbreak of a tropical rainstorm is so powerful it has haunted me for years. It is possibly the single greatest scene in all Reed's work. Although he managed to retain his uniquely individual style of cinema throughout the subsequent "The Man Between" and the early part of "A Kid for Two Farthings", he was working with much less interesting scripts. That he ultimately lost even his stylistic fingerprints in later works such as "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and "The Running Man" is one of cinema's greatest tragedies.

'Outcast of the Islands' is a slow-burner: The mood of the film is as sultry as the climate of Indonesia, where it is set, and tension builds up like the atmospheric oppressiveness ahead of a thunder storm. The storm actually breaks twice, first in an episode of shocking violence, and shortly thereafter as an actual downpour during which the tension is finally released. The plot concerns Peter Willems (Trevor Howard), a fraudulent company clerk in Makassar who loses his job and is taken by his old acquaintance captain Lingard (Ralph Richardson) to a trading outpost somewhere on the coast of Batam. There Willems is to support Lingard's manager Almeyer (Robert Morley). He quickly begins to succumb to the languor of the climate and the charm of Aissa (Karima), the daughter of the local chieftain. I have never watched any other film that shows as compellingly as 'Outcast of the Islands' how a person can completely go to pieces, losing not only their moral compass but also any vestiges of the esteem of others and self respect. It is entirely fitting that in the end, Lingard refuses to shoot Willems, preferring to leave his former friend to the hell he has created for himself and Aissa. Acting is good (excellent in the case of Howard), and the film has been beautifully shot in black and white (presumably colour would have been available, but black and white was a good decision). 'Outcast' is not an easy film to watch, which perhaps accounts for the fact that it is relatively little-known today, but it is still highly recommendable.